Professional Chewing gum industry meeting point

I gave a presentation on Chewing Gum Technology a couple of days ago in the German Confetionery School, ZDS, in Solingen. This lecture on chewing gum is part of the Sugar confectionery course that takes 4 weeks. I really enjoy these moments, as I can share what I know with others and most of the times I also learn news things from the comments and questions from the audience. This time, there were participants from very diverse origins, like Brazil, China, New Zealand, Austria, Argentina, Lebanon,… and they were very active and had very sharp questions. Thank you all!

I was recently in Argentina, so I take this excuse to comment a bit on the gum market of this country.
It is a clear duopoly with Kraft/Cadbury holding 54% market share in value and the local player Arcor 42%. Not much room left for the others! Each of them have their very strong brands (Beldent and TopLine respectively) well established in the market since many years. Being sugar free brands, these are gaining market share each year to other sugared brands like Bubaloo or Bazooka (both Cadbury), which decrease, following the general world-wide trend. We can find another common trend also in Argentina: Increase of chewing gum and decrease of bubble gum, with functional gum being a strong driver for the increase.
While bubble gum accounts for 12400 T and only 714 Million Peso value, chewing gum represents 7400 T but 1300 Million Peso value!
Two specificities of this market are the high inflation rate (around 25%) and the increased legislation to protect the local economy by making imports more and more difficult. Both issues affect the chewing gum market. The perspectives are positive and some growth (2%) is expected.

Now that we have to name the second player in our field “Mondelez” instead of Kraft, there many names that come to my mind which are no longer in use.

The same company, Kraft, took over some years ago Cadbury, which in turn had purchased Adams from Pfizer. Adams, a pioneer in our industry, was belonging to Warner Lambert. Cadbury also absorbed the Danish Dandy, the Argentinian Stani, the Egyptian BimBim and many others.

The other big player, Wrigley, is now within the Mars Inc. group, but it had absorbed some companies in the past, like Joyco (previously named General de Confiteria).

If we llok at the suppliers, we can also find names that are not there anymore. In the field of flavours I remember Bush Boake Allen (BBA), now in IFF; or Quest and Tastemaker now in Givaudan. In terms of machinery we can remember that names of Togum, Comeck or WLS. Many of their machines are still in factories around the world. Or even Nagema, from East Germany, for packaging.

If you also remember those names, it means that you have been around for quite a while as well….